Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has made no secret of her desire to step down when President Obama's current term expires in January. At present, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice appears to be the front-runner to succeed Mrs. Clinton, but Mr. Obama would be wise to pick someone else. Coming on the heels of Mrs. Clinton's tenure, the president needs a chief diplomat possessed of strength, and Ms. Rice is not that person.

The Obama administration's foreign policy has mostly projected weakness, and Mrs. Clinton has been a staunchly loyal soldier.

In August 2009, two months after the administration failed to forcefully condemn the Iranian government for quashing protests of the country's disputed presidential election, Mrs. Clinton told CNN Team Obama "handled it (the situation) pretty well." In November 2010, she pushed hard for Senate ratification of the New START treaty, which Mr. Obama signed with increasingly autocratic Russia the previous April. (If that constitutes "resetting" relations with the Russians, Americans are in a bad place.) More recently, Mrs. Clinton attempted to take heat off the president by taking the fall for lax security at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, ahead of the Sept. 11 attack by Islamic militants that killed Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

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